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THE LEE STATUE 

Remarks of 

S. S. BURDETT 

A comrad of the Grand Army of the Republic 

BEFORE THE MIDDLESEX CLUB 


BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 
MARCH 24, 1910 
(Veterans’ Night) 


Mr. President and Comrades: 

Near half a century has passed since eleven of the States 
of the Union pronounced the death sentence upon it and 
summoned the executioner to do the evil deed they had 
resolved upon. 

I am looking into the faces of some of those to whom the 
loyal people gave armed commission to stay the executioner’s 
hand—the fast falling remnant of those who may proudly say: 
“Of all this I was and saw.” 

The stake in that race where death was king and life a 
jest, you know. 

The upturned faces on the battlefields were dewy with 
youth; on them shone the early light. It is evening now for 
their surviving comrades, and for all of them. It is evening 
now for the survivors of those magnificent armies we over¬ 
threw, who together with us made the American name for¬ 
ever immortal in arms. In place of the red flame of battle 






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we are sharers together in the beams of benediction which 
the setting sun casts over the vanishing day. 

The glories gleaned on the battlefields, well nigh equally 
divided where massed columns met, have been matched by 
the tireless, all-conquering energies of the disbanded hosts 
shown in every walk of civil life during the intervening years. 4 

Alabama’s furnace fires send their challenge to those 
of Pennsylvania, and the sound of the shuttle, drowning 
the music of the streams beside which they speed, in half 
the States of the South bids New England beware for her 
supremacy. 

It is the one, the United Country, which has turned the gaze 
of the whole world upon us and set the feet of the nations 
tramping to our shores. 

This does not call in question the truth of Garfield’s saying 
that in the struggle for the Union “We were right, ever¬ 
lastingly right, and that our foes were wrong, eternally 
wrong;” nor does it mean that their hearts must cease to 
throb with pride over victories won; with affection for those 
who led them gallantly to the end, with sorrow over homes 
made desolate, over fallen comrades whose epitaph must 
read “for a lost cause,” and over ideals forever vanished. 
This is a human world. Men come and go and are forgotten; 
but there are sparks of the divine which in just a little meas¬ 
ure ennoble men and nations, and do not die with them. 
Affection and gratitude outlive the decayed body, within 
which once dwelled the spirit which awoke them to life. 
Nor in this regard does it matter that in the final arbitrament 
the cause which stirred them into being is by victory and 
history coildemned. They who cast their lives into the bal¬ 
ances in defense of a cause they champion need no other assur¬ 
ance of the sincerity of their purposes. 

The Congress of the United States, by act duly passed, has 
invited the States of the Union to assemble in the old hall of 
the House of Representatives the semblances of two of their 
chief citizens whom they deem most worthy of honor. The 


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place of assembly is noble in its proportions and will ever be 
sacred to patriot hearts for the memories it invokes. Its 
echoes sing of high hopes and great resolves as well as of 
palterings and compromises which put off the evil day only to 
find that respite had given longer time for the marshaling of 
greater forces for that greater struggle in which we bore a 
part. 

Massachusetts will hold the place in reverence, for there 
one of the galaxy of her immortals, John Quincy Adams, 
fought his great fight and took his last stand in defense of 
those dumb, human cattle to pray for whom was then to 
give offense. Already, have been gathered there the con¬ 
tributions of many States. Some are worthy and will not 
depend for their future fame on the shelter which the roof of 
the Capitol gives to their more or less comely figures, though 
to use the expression of your living Senator, to whom the 
togas of Webster and Sumner seem none too large, uttered 
but a few days since, they may be “elbowed and surrounded 
by the temporarily notorious and the illustrious obscure.” 
There has been recently placed there, as the contribution of 
his native State of Virginia, the bronze figure of Robert E. 
Lee, garbed in the uniform of a general in the Confederate 
Army. It has not yet met with formal acceptance from the 
Congress; no day has been set for eulogy. Some of the gener¬ 
ation who knew him as the sword of the rebellion yet live. 
We are of that generation. The fires of passion, of resent¬ 
ment, and perhaps of revenge which march under the banners 
of war, though somewhat cooled by the chilling hand of age, 
still smoulder. The grandeur of our to-day sometimes points 
us backward and asks the question, and asks it over and over 
with persistent emphasis: What would have be,en had the belted 
warrior for whose figure Virginia craves the nation’s shel¬ 
tering hospitality, on some final battlefield received the 
sword of Grant in token of the death of the Union? It is no 
impeachment of that charity which “covereth a multitude 
of sins,” nor of that magnanimity to the foe, exhibited by 



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soldier, citizen, State and nation when the Confederacy fell 
to rise no more, that here and there the citizen and the vet¬ 
eran have registered a protest. Is it wise or well that the 
protest, the little fire now kindled, be fanned into a flame? 
I think not. 

The legislation under which the States were invited to 
occupy the dedicated chamber was approved July 2, 1864, 
now to be found in R. S. U. S., Sec. 1814. The pertinent 
language is: “And the President is authorized to invite all 
the States to provide and furnish statues in marble or bronze, 
not exceeding two in number for each State, of deceased 
persons who have been citizens thereof, and illustrious for 
their historic renown or for distinguished civic or military 
services, such as each State may deem to be worthy of this 
national commemoration.” 

It requires only a layman’s wit to see that the question of 
the worthiness of the subject was left to the determination 
of the State. No censor on behalf of the United States was 
provided either as to character of the person figured or the 
work of the artist in delineating him. The door was opened; 
the States were invited to enter without other restriction 
upon their discretion than that the chosen should be “de¬ 
ceased” “who have been citizens thereof” and that the con¬ 
tribution should be of marble or bronze. It is true that, as 
a rule, as each State has installed its contribution there has 
been a formal resolution of acceptance passed by both 
Houses of Congress and a day set apart for eulogies. Rhode 
Island was first to respond to the national invitation with a 
statue of Nathaniel Green (January 20, 1870). On the 
occasion of its acceptance by resolution, the beloved Senator, 
Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, rising in his place, said: ‘ ‘The 
law as it now stands is complete in itself. I shall not oppose, 
however, the passage of this resolution as the matter has been 
inaugurated, and I hope as it has been introduced it will be 
put in proper form and passed. I repeat, however, the law 
in itself is complete and requires no legislation whatever, and 
I trust that hereafter it will be so regarded.” 


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The vState of New York in 1873 and 1874 placed in the 
National Statuary Hall, as her contribution, the statues of 
George Clinton and Robert R. Livingston. No action has 
been asked of or taken by Congress in the matter of these 
contributions, but they are as safely and lawfully there as 
they would be had formal resolution of acceptance been 
made of record. The statue of William Allen, one of the 
contributions of the State of Ohio, was placed in the Hall in 
1888. No action has been taken by Senate or House. 
Since 1901 the statues of John F. Kenna and Francis H. 
Pierpont, the contribution of WestVirginia, have had a place 
in the Hall, but no action by either House has been had. 
There are other cases in which but one House took action 
looking to acceptance. Pennsylvania presented the figures 
of her Muhlenberg and her Fulton in 1881. In 1889 these 
works were formally accepted by resolution of the House 
of Representatives, but no action was taken by the Senate. 

When this great commonwealth set herself to the task of 
choosing, from the overflowing granary of her great dead, the 
meager two who should stand for her history and for her 
affections with the gathering few to be sheltered in the ‘ ‘ Old 
Hall,’’she rightly determined that the selected ones should 
be “commemorative of eras” in her history; and so John 
Winthrop, twelve times Governor of the Colony (from 1630 
to 1649),whose sway was under the British flag and whose 
allegiance was to the British crown so long as life lasted, was 
chosen; and it was a true instinct which set by his side ‘ ‘ the 
fire-brand,” the inciter of successful rebellion against the 
mother country whom all the world knows as Samuel Adams. 

When the marble portraitures of these men had met with 
the approval of the appointed commission, that commission , 
as it duly reported to your Legislature, installed them in the 
places where they now stand; and, considering that their own 
powers were ended, requested the Massachusetts delegation in 
Congress ‘ ‘ to call to the attention of that body the response 
of this State to its gracious invitation in such time and manner 
and with such formality as usage and propriety may seem to 


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you to require, and your own good taste and judgment may 
commend.” • 

You will perceive that this had in it no thought of needed 
authority to enter the chamber nor of necessity for an act 
excusatory of an unauthorized intrusion. It called only fqr 
courteous notice to the Congress that Massachusetts had 
accepted the proffered hospitality of the law and desired the 
setting apart of a day in which to refresh the memories of the 
living by a recital of words and deeds of Winthrop and 
Adams, which should not be forgotten. 

In the light of the law as it stands enacted, and of the act 
completed by the State of Virginia, duly taken by her lawfully 
constituted authorities, what may the Congress now do to 
mend or mar the situation? The authority of Congress over 
the Capitol is plenary. It may repeal the Act of 1864 which 
is unthinkable. It may amend the Act by constituting a 
commission of censors as to all future proffers of statues by 
the States, new or old, yet in arrears, which would be justly 
resented by the States; or it may register a protest against 
the future acceptance of the semblance of any man whose 
sword or energies were cast in the scale against the Union, 
and this would light again fires of passion, now well nigh 
extinguished, until our whole firmament would be aflame. 

But why object to Tee at all. He is the second largest 
determining figure in a contest which history shall record as 
big with hopes and fears, which not only concerned us but 
concerned all civilized mankind. In that contest he was but 
the sword of John C. Calhoun and his like, who formed the 
plan of battle which Tee donned the uniform of the Con¬ 
federacy to fight out. Calhoun is rightly there, as the senior 
Senator from Massachusetts has eloquently pointed out. I 
have never believed that the very heart of Tee was in the 
cause for which he fought. He was the victim of a cult 
which denied us a nation and ordered that supreme allegiance 
be given to the State. He followed the lead of South Caro¬ 
lina. He did not heed the voice of the great Virginian, John 
Marshall. 


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That chamber of the chosen of the States is history in the 
making, not a mere register of present day emotions; let it 
be truly balanced. Over against Calhoun and bee will ever 
stand Morton and Phil Kearny; and Grant is near by. I 
would that John A. Andrew were there. Some day and 
somehow he must be gathered in. 

Is the objection to Lee that he is there in the garb of a 
Confederate general? It lost its dangerous meaning at 
Appomattox. It marks him to-day as the fallen, and gives the 
luster of contrast to the uniformed soldiers of the Revolution 
and of the Rebellion, standing about him, whose garb be¬ 
speaks their devotion to the flag we love and the country 
they made and saved. And we may remember that when the 
prodigal returned he was clothed in the garments of his sin 
but was not refused admission to his father’s house. 

If there should ever come a day when the Nazarene shall 
so have triumphed that the nations in ‘ ‘ one fold and under 
one shepherd” shall gather into a world’s Pantheon the 
history-making men and women who have adorned or dark¬ 
ened the earth, a Pharaoh must envisage a Moses, a Mohammed 
a Constantine, the knightly Saladin stand face to face with 
Richard of the Lion Heart, Fabius would lack his emphasis 
did not Hannibal confront him; nor would the holy zeal 
of a Peter the Hermit find better background than those 
“scourges of God, ” Tamerlane and Gengis Khan. Surely, 
face to face with a Hildebrand should stand a Bruno and a 
Galileo. George Washington confronting George III will 
herald the birth of a nation whose immortal motto came to 
be “0/ the people , for the people , and by the people .” 

Your senior Senator found just ground for commending the 
personal purity and mental integrity of the author and chief 
exponent of that political policy which, in its speaking mood, 
was called “State Rights,” but which in its heart’s concern 
sought the perpetuation and nationalization of the system of 
African slavery. 

No word of just commendation affecting the personal 
qualities of Calhoun, the directing brain of the causes of the 
truggle, can be uttered, that is not true of Lee who carried 


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his sword. He was noble in form, gentle in word and act, 
calm in victory and in defeat, and both as man and soldier 
was the Bayard of his day —“Sans peur et sans reproche.” 
Since someone is to stand in that “ capitoline ” array so that, 
as history, the whole great tale may be figured and told, is 
there any other from among the Confederate hosts whose 
presence will so little challenge lingering resentments, or so 
amply illustrate the greatness of the task of those who suc¬ 
cessfully met and overcame rebellion on the battlefield ? In 
presenting this statue garbed as it is there may be a little of 
bravado, but no matter that. We must allow our former 
foes to be human as well as ourselves. The impetus which 
inspired this action on the part of Virginia was not wholly 
her own. Behind it was the heart of that whole southland 
whose legions unfurled their banners under his leadership 
and furled them again only when he bowed his head at 
Appomattox. That they who presented him were not only 
moved by a loving regard for his person and memory which 
every generous heart must respect, but in large measure were 
impelled as well by the hope and perhaps belief that his and 
their lost cause might be somewhat commended to coming 
generations by his companionship with the “Father of his 
Country, ” with whom he is associated in Virginia’s contribu¬ 
tion to our National Pantheon. The coming ages will have 
none of this. When above the roar of the last battle the 
gentle words resounded over the land “Let us have peace, ” 
the savagery of war forgot its passion for blood and every 
man saw in the beams of the setting sun a benediction for all. 
The pathos of the scene that followed has not its like in 
history. A disbanded host, which for four long years had 
defied the conscience of the world and boldly grappled with 
the civilization of an age, wended each his own way toward 
the spot where stood,or once had stood,the father’s house, 
trusting to the stranger for the charity of food and shelter 
by the way. There were tears of the heart for these. But 
for the cause, the cause that was lost? Beyond the limits 
of the Confederacy whose lines were blotted out that day no- 


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where where men live and pray to the “Our Father” of the 
Nazarene, whether on the mountains or in the valleys, by the 
rivers or on the seas, in the cottage or in the palace, did nature 
heave a sigh or man shed a tear that the land of Washington 
had been cleansed of its sin and that its noble phrases declar¬ 
ing the causes of its rebellion against the mother country 
were no longer a mockery. We did not fear the man; we 
need not fear his counterfeit presentment. His pedestal will 
be a shrine for a day of the remnant of those who bid him 
good-bye at Appomattox, but more and more as the years 
roll on he will symbolize the dying day and not the coming 
morning. No propaganda of evil will find strength in his 
name. It would not, if his lips could be unsealed. In a 
greater chamber near by, under the very dome of the Capitol, 
there stands a marble figure upon whose pedestal the badge 
of the Grand Army of the Republic is emblazoned. An 
open door gives exit and entrance between the chambers 
where stand, in the one, the chief figure of a beaten rebellion^ 
in the other the laurel crowned chief of the Union hosts. 
Grant keeps that door, and it will please us who followed 
where he led, so long as our old eyes are unclosed, to dream 
at least that the thousands of our comrades who sleep with 
him still rally to his standard. 

I read the other day that, in a State that shall not be named, 
a picture of Abraham Lincoln was found hanging on a school¬ 
room wall; that its patrons demanded its removal and 
denounced the authors of the indignity. That example 
does not appeal to us. History with imperious voice de¬ 
mands silence, when personal passion, aims, and purposes 
obtrude themselves upon the scene. It concerns itself with 
events, with results, and calls the chief actors in them to the 
witness stand. So long as the written page exists, the names 
of Grant and Lee will be coupled together; so long as a shel¬ 
tering roof remains upon the Capitol at Washington the 
thronging feet of the generations will pause awhile to exalt 
the leader of the armies of Liberty and Union and to mark 
the image of him—the last of civilized men—who led an 
army in defense of the right to chattelize mankind. 


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But whilst we thus characterize the leaders of the rebellion 
and their cause (and only because of it) in words which, though 
true to the history we know and to the times in which we live, 
may seem drawn from a well of bitter waters, let us not too 
much “boast ourselves/ 5 There are many pages in the 
histories of the non-slave-holding States, and among them 
of Massachusetts, which in this behalf record events we should 
be glad to forget. 

Even the spirit and purposes of those acts of southern 
legislatures which to-day encourage the enslavement of the 
mind and the belittling of the soul of the black race by dis¬ 
criminations in the award of public rights, have their proto¬ 
types in Massachusetts laws. A citizen of Boston—a man of 
pure life and lofty ideals—who pronounced the doom and 
happily lived to see the death of slavery, was dragged through 
her streets with a rope around his neck. He dared to be an 
echo of Heaven’s hate, of the oppressors of the poor. He did 
not heed the clinking at the mouths of the money bags of 
Beacon Street. Before Garrison delivered his message, Rev. 
John Weiss, of Watertown, speaking for the few who then 
openly expressed their detestation of the “peculiar institu¬ 
tion,” truly said:“Our northern apathy” (and he might have 
added “sympathy”) “heated the iron, forged the manacles, 
and built the pillory.” 

Until almost the moment when the blind Samson, standing 
between the pillars of our then slavery ruled temple, bowed 
himself to his mighty task and it fell, we of the North were 
of “the jeering multitude, who scoffed at his rights, mocked 
his apparent helplessness, and sported with his bonds.” So 
said Salmon P. Chase, as he stood before a United States 
judge pleading for one accused of the crime of helping a man 
to freedom. Take down your copy of Henry Wilson’s “Rise 
and Fall of the Slave Power in America” and see the linea¬ 
ments of “Northern Apologists for Southern Rights,” and 
learn to be modest in your judgments of their partners in the 
sin we so much deplore. 

Who of Boston’s older people do not recall the fugi- 


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tives George Latimer and Anthony Burns anc. remember 
how the noble few then bowed their heads in diame while 
the many, to give them undue flattery, “passed by on the 
other side.” 

I have seen in Boston a building you call tne “Old State 
House.” It stands in the midst of the rush, and roar of the 
city’s expanding commerce. It obstructs the widening of 
the passing streets. The hungry eyes of the builder are 
upon it. The municipality in its improving moods would 
fain have it out of the way, but against every lifting of an 
unfriendly hand the chorus from the throat of all has been 

“Woodman, spare that tree.” 

It speaks of colonial days; of allegiance to the mother country. 
Upon its front still stand the Lion and the Unicorn, the em¬ 
blems of that British power under which, near by, the anoint¬ 
ing blood of the final victory of the colonies was shed. Not 
the mere uniform of an English general is there, but the 
escutcheon, the coat of arms, the emblazenment of the 
might which sought to stay the rising purposes which have 
their fulfilment in our own to-day. What better balance 
for Bunker Hill does Boston boast than the captive lion 
and unicorn? 

Dear Jack Adams, your own Jack Adams—peace to his 
ashes!—said here in Boston: ‘ ‘ Men are often greater in what 
they refrain from doing than in what they do.” 

There are no cloudless days this side the veil; somewhere 
the sun is hidden. 

I grant you that it might seem to us to have been more 
gracious in Virginia to have clothed her great son in the cap 
and gown of that noble vocation which had his glad service 
in his declining years. But that would have been to salute 
the dying of to-day and to have robbed history of her lesson 
and her truth. 

The altar on which our comrades shed their blood is now 
as wide as the continent. One people hear the salute to the 
flag we love at the sun’s rising; they hear it again with glad- 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



ness at her setting. I remind you once more that to-morrow 
is history. If our opponents, who in the day of their madness 
sought an dud of the Republic, so choose—and so they have 
chosen—to give to him portraiture in the garb of the prisoner 
of war he was: when he last donned it as a living emblem of 
authority, we nay well silence emotions which are of a day. 
Coming generations will know its import and, gazing on it, 
will bless the hou5 when it ceased to have other significance 
than the reminded of a time when the premier nation, fyorn 
under Washington's sword, reached its manhood with the 
surrender of that of Robert B. Lee. 

Comrades of Massachusetts, I have been with you before; 
then, as now, have partaken of your boundless hospitality, 
and rejoiced in your affectionate greetings. I would that if 
but a little of the seed of the race could be spared from the 
common lot of man that some of you should be the chosen 
ones. 

I know how you have honored your comrades dead, and 
how you care for the living. How with jealous care, under 
your promptings, it has been seen to that no pauper role shall 
have on it the name of a soldier of the Union; and that no 
administrator of public charities shall give the dole; that 
because you are becoming few, the remnant shall not have 
less honor than had the many. 

The beloved comrade who for so long has dispensed the 
willing bounty of the State sits with us to-night. The Grand 
Army of the Republic as well as his State is his debtor for 
services faithfully rendered for many years. I hope that the 
time is ripe when, in recognition of his services, his sacrifices 
and his worth, he may be called to adorn the highest place in 
the gift of the Grand Army of the Republic. 

Comrades, for to-night I give you my hail! and my fare¬ 
well! We do not know of the morrow; but whatever betide 
there is a glorious company whose familiar names are fresh 
in memory, who once cheered us here, who are waiting us 
who now “only wait.” 
















